Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Online research

The premier online source is Grove Music Online, which has the full-text electronic versions of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2nd Edition  (2001) and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), The Oxford Companion to Music (2002), and The Oxford Dictionary of Music (2006). Access to the site is by subscription only. However, if you belong to a public library which has a subscription to Grove Music, you can access the site via the barcode on your library card. Many university libraries also have subscriptions to this site.

The GroveMusic template can be used to format Wikipedia links into the Grove Music Online website.

All the other sites listed on this page are publicly accessible, trustworthy and particularly useful for researching articles on opera-related subjects and finding public domain images. When using web sites not listed here, particularly amateur web sites and anonymously edited commercial database sites like IMDb, it is a good idea to check the facts in a second source if at all possible. Such sites can often contain errors and are generally not internally referenced. Other sites to be wary of:
 * BBC Music – This sub-site of the BBC posts "biographies" which are mirrors of Wikipedia and reader-generated reviews.
 * bach-cantatas – Their biographies can be useful as a short-term solution but some of them are lifted from Wikipedia or very closely paraphrased from the artist's (or their agent's) website.
 * NME online version – Virtually all the biographies are lifted from Wikipedia or are reader-generated. They're not from the print edition of NME.

Apart from the works listed in the Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and Source literature sections (and some opera libretti), the texts are generally all in copyright and must not be pasted verbatim or closely paraphrased in articles. Note that direct English translations (even your own) of copyright foreign texts are likewise protected as derivative works and can only be briefly quoted or closely paraphrased under "fair use".

Programme notes and synopses
This section was last updated and/or checked for broken links on 22:25, 17 Jan 2024 (UTC)

Teatro la Fenice in Venice publishes many of their programmi di sala online. The pdf files (in Italian) contain full librettos, extensive essays on the operas, many illustrations with original playbills and posters, role creators' portraits, original set and costume designs, score extracts, etc. They are listed here

Opera America provides notes and features on 22 frequently performed operas.
 * Features index
 * Sample feature on Aida

Playbill Arts has a large features section containing opera essays for the companies using Playbill to publish their programmes.
 * Feature index with search facility
 * Sample feature on Tosca for Dallas Opera

The New York Metropolitan Opera has an extensive collection of synopses. They can be found from the search box at https://www.metopera.org/search/ e.g. "Benvenuto Cellini synopsis" (sans quotes): An alphabetical partial list of selected titles is shown at https://www.metopera.org/discover/synopses/ – manually searching reveals more titles than shown here.
 * https://www.metopera.org/user-information/synopses-archive/benvenuto-cellini Synopsis for Benvenuto Cellini

Newspaper and magazine archives
This section was last updated and/or checked for broken links on 10:23, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Searching newspaper archives

 * See also: The Opera Critic section below.

With the caveat that journalists can sometimes be sloppy about checking facts, often the best independent sources for contemporary singers or productions can be mainstream press or journal articles. The Guardian (UK), The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, and Time Magazine all have extensive archives that are largely free (except for certain NYT articles). The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (Melbourne) also have many free articles in their pre-2006 archives. To access their contents quickly, type the following in the search box at Google:

Examples using this method:
 * site:guardian.co.uk "Singer's name" (or "Opera company Name", or "Opera name")
 * site:query.nytimes.com "Singer's Name"
 * site:www.sfgate.com "Singer's Name"
 * site:www.time.com "Singer's Name"
 * site:theage.com.au "Singer's Name"
 * site:smh.com.au "Singer's Name"
 * The singer "Angela Gheorghiu" in The New York Times
 * The opera company "Garsington Opera" in The Guardian
 * The opera "Doctor Atomic" in The San Francisco Chronicle

Google News revamped their website in August 2011, rendering the News Archive search virtually unusable. However, the contents of their collection of scanned newspapers can still be searched via Google's ordinary web search and typing the following into the search box: Example using this method:
 * site:news.google.com "Key Word(s)"
 * "Rosa Ponselle"

Specialist publications

 * Opera News published by the Metropolitan Opera Guild has extensive searchable online archives, many of the articles, even those going quite far back, do not require subscription for access. Although the site has its own search facility, more results can be found using Google by typing the following into the search box:
 * site:operanews.com "Key Word(s)"
 * Sample Google/Opera News search result for "Juan Diego Florez"


 * Opera a UK based magazine but with reviews from around the world. The complete archive back to the first issue in February 1950 is available on subscription only.
 * Gramophone, a searchable database containing articles back to around 2010.
 * La Scena Musicale, a Canada based magazine in both English and French, has virtually all their issues available online, with a site search.
 * Ópera Actual, a Spanish language magazine, with an online site search.
 * Revistas Culturales, the official web site of the Asociación de Revistas Culturales de España, reprints many a handful of back articles (with the original illustrations) from Spanish classical music and opera magazines, most of which are only available in hardcopy. The magazines covered include Scherzo, Ritmo, Ópera Actual, and Melómano. To access the articles available from each magazine, click on the magazine name.
 * Sample summary page for Ritmo on Revistas Culturales


 * Opernwelt and Das Opernglas, the two main German opera magazines, have only the cover interview and one or two reviews from the current issue online, plus photos of their past covers. Das Opernglas has searchable archives, but payment is required to access individual articles.

Journal articles

 * Jstor.org is now making their pre-1923 journal content available without subscription. See this page for more. They are rolling out the free content gradually. As of January 2012, the following are available in areas of interest to the project:
 * The Musical Quarterly 1915-1922
 * The Musical Times 1844-1869
 * Music Educators Journal 1914-1922
 * The list of all journals currently available without a subscription is here.


 * All issues of the French journal Le Ménestrel (1833–1940) are available via Gallica at this page.

The Opera Critic
This section was last updated 9 Dec 2014

The Opera Critic site is a subscription-based service with external links to international press coverage (English, French, Spanish, German and Italian) as well as production photos and schedules for singers.

Google book search
Google's specialized book search engine can be very useful, although the results will vary from citation only, to very limited 'snippets', to fairly extensive previews, to the full book. However, even a snippet can be enough if you just want to reference a single fact. You can set the search for the type of results you want (all books, books with previews, or complete books) via the 'advanced search' mode. Note that the books are generally not in text format. They are scans of the actual pages in the original work, although many of the out of copyright works are also available in PDF and plain text versions. When searching for mentions of an individual person, try searching the name in a variety of orders, e.g. "Giorgio Tozzi" and "Tozzi, Giorgio". The latter form is particularly useful for finding entries in biographical dictionaries and similar reference works.

Selection of works which have a fairly extensive preview available and are internally searchable:


 * American Opera Singers And Their Recordings: Critical Commentaries And Discographies by Clyde T. McCants, McFarland & Company, 2004
 * The Rough Guide to Opera by Matthew Boyden (Contributors: Joe Staines, Nick Kimberley), published 2002, Rough Guides
 * Opera 2000. Annuario dell'opera lirica in Italia edited by G. Pugliaro, EDT srl, 2000
 * Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss by Paul A. Robinson, Cornell University Press, 1986
 * Wagner and the Romantic Hero by Simon Williams, Cambridge University Press, 2004
 * Osmin's Rage: Philosophical Reflections on Opera, Drama, and Text by Peter Kivy, Cornell University Press, 1999
 * The Lives of Haydn and Mozart, with Observations on Metastasio, and on the Present State of Opera in France and Italy, by Stendhal (translated by L.A.C. Bombet), Elibron Classics, 2001 (replica of the 1818 edition published by John Murray, London)
 * The Wordsworth Book of Opera by Stanley Sadie and Arthur Jacobs, Wordsworth Editions, 1996

University of California Press
The University of California Press has made several complete opera and classical music-related books from their 'Scholarship Editions' available online. Note that although they are free, they are still in copyright and their contents must not be pasted verbatim into articles. All the books in the series (including those without full public access) can be internally searched. The page numbering in the online versions reflects that of the hardcopy versions.
 * UCP Search page The filter can be set to either all books or public access books only.

Selected UCP public access books
 * Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860 edited by Ralph P. Locke and Cyrilla Barr, University of California Press, 1997.
 * Music as Cultural Practice, 1800 - 1900 by Lawrence Kramer, University of California Press, 1990
 * The Ultimate Art: Essays around and about Opera by David Littlejohn, University of California Press, 1992.
 * Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre by Ellen Rosand, University of California Press, 1991.
 * Crescendo of the Virtuoso: Spectacle, Skill, and Self-Promotion in Paris during the Age of Revolution by Paul Metzner, University of California Press, 1998.
 * Constructive Dissonance: Arnold Schoenberg and the Transformations of Twentieth-Century Culture edited by Juliane Brand and Christopher Hailey, University of California Press, 1997.
 * The Early Works of Arnold Schoenberg, 1893-1908 by Walter M. Frisch, University of California Press, 1997.
 * Stravinsky and The Rite of Spring by Pieter C. van den Toorn, University of California Press, 1987.
 * Papal Patronage and the Music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513 by Christopher A. Reynolds, University of California Press, 1996.

Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg has many opera-related full length books available including memoirs, opera reference books, and libretti. Note that as all these are out of copyright, i.e. published before 1923, the reference works may contain errors which have been corrected in more modern books. Unlike Google Books and University of California Press which provide access to the original publications, the books on Project Gutenberg are technically re-publications of the original works in text or HTML format and often do not contain the original page numbers or detailed information about the edition from which they were taken. The HTML versions of the books can also be good sources for photographs. Unless you know the exact title or author you are looking for, it may be easier to do a key word search via Google by typing the following in the search box: site:gutenberg.org "key word (or words)"
 * Project Gutenberg catalog
 * Sample search on "Saint-Saens"
 * Sample search on "opera"

The Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a rich source for scanned out-of-print music and opera books, many of which are no longer in copyright. The books are available in several formats and include foreign language books, e.g.
 * Unvergängliche Stimmen (a 1962 German biographical dictionary of singers by Kutsch & Riemens).
 * Annals Of Music In America (covers the period from 1645 to 1922)
 * Biographie universelle des musiciens (multiple volumes, most dating from the latter half of the 19th century)
 * Princesses de comédie et déesses d'opéra; portraits camées, profils, silhouettes (1860)
 * Histoire du Théatre de l'opera en France: Depuis l'établissement de l'Académie royale de musique (1753)
 * Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (3rd Edition, 1919)

Also the Internet Archive is Loewenberg's Annals of Opera 1597–1940. It not only gives the dates of the world premiere, but also the dates of the first performance in other cities.

The site has its own search engine by topic or author: However, it's not always as efficient for searching the actual contents of the books as a Google site search:
 * Sample search results for "Opera"
 * Sample search results for "Geraldine Farrar"
 * Google search results for site:archive.org wagner + Ring + "royal opera"

Source literature for libretti
A selection of the literary sources for opera libretti:


 * Scènes de la Vie Bohème Novel by Henri Murger, 1847-49 (in English translation) - the source for both Puccini's and Leoncavallo's La bohème.
 * Madame Butterfly Novella by John Luther Long, 1903 - the source for Puccini's Madama Butterfly.
 * Carmen Novella by Prosper Mérimée, 1845 (in English translation) - the source for Bizet's Carmen.
 * La Dame Aux Camelias Novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, 1848 (in English translation) - the source for Verdi's La traviata.
 * Cavalleria rusticana Short story by Giovanni Verga 1880 (in the original Italian only) - the source for Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
 * The Lady of the Lake Poem by Sir Walter Scott, 1810 - the source for Rossini's La donna del lago.
 * The Bride of Lammermoor Novel by Sir Walter Scott, 1819 - the source for Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.
 * The Queen of Spades Short story by Alexander Pushkin, 1834 (in English translation) - the source for Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades).
 * The Girl of the Golden West Novel by David Belasco, 1911 based on his 1905 play - the source for Puccini's La fanciulla del West.
 * Don Carlos Play by Frederich von Schiller, 1786 (in English translation) - the source for Verdi's Don Carlos.
 * Wilhelm Tell Play by Frederich von Schiller, 1804 (in English translation) - the source for Rossini's Guillaume Tell (William Tell).
 * Billy Budd Novel by Herman Melville, 1891 - the source for Britten's Billy Budd.
 * The Sorrows of Young Werther Novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1774 (in English translation) - the source for Massenet's Werther.

Biographical encyclopedias and dictionaries

 * The Canadian Encyclopedia – online version
 * Australian Dictionary of Biography – online version (biographies of deceased people only)
 * Dictionary of New Zealand Biography – online version (biographies of deceased people only)
 * Jewish Encyclopedia – online version (12-volumes, originally published between 1901-1906)
 * Grand Larousse encyclopédique – online version (articles from the print version or written under editorial control of Larousse except for articles designated "Les contributions d'internautes" which are signed but reader-generated, in French)
 * Store norske leksikon – online version (in Norwegian)
 * Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – online version (The full version requires subscription. However, nearly all public libraries in England, Scotland, and Wales, and all in Northern Ireland, subscribe to the Oxford DNB online. The site also makes seven biographies free each week in the Lives of the Week section.)
 * Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians – The 1900 edition in four volumes is available at Wikisource as scans of individual pages alongside un-proofed plain text: Vol. 1 – A to Impromptu Vol. 2 – Improperia to Plain Song Vol. 3 – Planché to Sumer Is Icumen In Vol. 4 – Sumer Is Icumen In (cont'd) to Zur Mühlen (also includes, Final Additions, Index, and Catalogue of Articles by Writer)
 * Dictionnaire universel des contemporains: contenant toutes les personnes notables de la France et des pays étrangers – Multiple editions of Gustave Vapereau's monumental work (from the original 1858 edition to the 1893 edition) are available at the Gallica site of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It's best to choose the last edition before the subject's death as this will have the most complete information. Editions published after the subject's death will often have only a date of death and reference to earlier editions. Note that only the 1858 edition is available as PDF files. Later editions must be read online from scans of the pages.) Édition 1858 – Volume 1 (A–H); Volume 2 (I–Z); Supplément Édition 1870, Édition 1880, Édition 1893

Opera house archives
This section was last updated and/or checked for broken links on 10:26, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The Metropolitan Opera archives
The MetOpera Database is an invaluable tool for researching singers who have performed there. Navigating it can be tricky if you're a new user. Below is a quick guide to using and referencing the database with Maria Callas as an example.
 * 1) Go to the https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/ Metropolitan Opera Archives
 * 2) Click on: Key Word Search or go to https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/searchkw.jsp
 * 3) Insert Callas in the search box and click "Search".

The resulting search results page will have 22 items in chronological order. If all boxes "search reviews" to "Met Tour" are ticked, 43 items will be returned. Any available photographs will be shown as thumbnails (click to enlarge).

The first item in the list will be Norma {58}. (The number in curly brackets means that this was the 58th performance of that opera at the Met.) Beneath that heading basic information will be listed:
 * Date and place of performance (Metropolitan Opera House; Mon, October 29, 1956)
 * If it was the Opening Night of the season (in this case, yes)
 * The Met's General Manager at the time (Rudolf Bing)
 * Any house debuts in that performance (in this case, Maria Callas)
 * If any reviews are available. (in this case, yes)

Clicking on Maria Callas in the cast list will produce the same list of 22 items for all of her Met performances, but this time a URL is shown and can be used in articles; in this case, it's Clicking on Norma {58} will take you to a page with the full cast list and three reviews reprinted reviews. This will take you to a page which lists all her performances as Norma at the Met. Unlike the keyword results, it is possible to provide a direct link to this page. The resulting complex URL will look like this:
 * https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/search.jsp?q=%22Maria%20Callas%22&PERF_ROLE=Norma&src=browser&sort=PDATE
 * 1) Scroll further down to: Met Careers
 * 2) Click on: Callas, Maria [Norma]
 * https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/search.jsp?q=%22Maria%20Callas%22&PERF_ROLE=Norma&src=browser&sort=PDATE/

To find a specific performance of an opera, its title and performance date range has to be entered at the search page, https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/searchkw.jsp. E.g. La fanciulla del West between 1 December 1910 and 31 December 1911 (entered as 19101201 – 19111231) will show 14 performances, but it will not produce a URL for re-use. However, clicking on any of those performances will, below the cast list, show "Search by title" with La fanciulla del West; clicking it will produce a list of all the work's performances with a re-usable URL: Clicking on a specific performance of a work from these lists will produce a re-usable URL: Many Wikipedia articles contain URLs to individual performance that where created under a previous scheme at the Metropolitan Opera Archive. That scheme used URLs similar to These URLs have to be converted manually to the new scheme. As the website's own search facility doesn't return any results for the CID number, a Google search has to be used: searching the string "CID : 12140" with the qualifier site:archives.metopera.org gives this URL: The resulting list should be very short, and clicking on any result will open a list of performances, with "12140" among them. Clicking on the title belonging to that CID will open the page of details for that performance (the premiere of Le nozze di Figaro at the Met on 31 January 1894):
 * https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/search.jsp?titles=La%20Fanciulla%20del%20West&sort=PDATE
 * https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/record.jsp?dockey=0361448 for the first performance of La fanciulla del West.
 * http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=BibSpeed/fullcit.w?xCID=12140 (no longer works)
 * https://archives.metopera.org/MetOperaSearch/record.jsp?dockey=0358340

Other opera house and orchestra archives
These tend to be much less comprehensive than the Met archives, but can be useful.
 * La Scala archives. These are extensive and often include production photographs. Registration (free) is required to search and accesss them. At the moment the site is only in Italian. If you need help navigating them, leave a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera.
 * San Francisco Opera Performance Archives Currently unavailable, as at 18 January 2024. The link leads to an undated page that states "San Francisco Opera’s online performance archive database is currently not available. We apologize for the inconvenience while we work to get it back online. If you have reference questions that might be answered in the database, please send them to archive@sfopera.com as we can access the data internally."
 * Royal Opera House Online Collections
 * Vienna State Opera Performance Archives (in German only) Link broken, as at 18 January 2024. Searching the site for likely keywords (the words for archive, history etc in both German and English) returns no relevent matches.
 * Lyric Opera of Chicago Performance Archives
 * Opera Orchestra of New York Performance History OONY ceased operations in 2016?/2017?, the website has gone and the archive with it.
 * The New York Philharmonic's Performance Archive (with works and their soloists) from 1842 to the present.

Image sources
This section was last updated and/or checked for broken links on 10:44, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

When uploading any images, check that they are out of copyright (published before 1923 or the artist/photographer died over 70 years ago). It may require extra research on your part to establish this unless the image is obviously old, e.g. a contemporary portrait of an 18th or early 19th century singer. Some later images such as portraits of deceased singers may still be used under "fair use", but this requires a detailed fair use rationale, and note that according to Non-free content, images copyrighted to press agencies such as Associated Press, Corbis and Getty Images may not be used. (See image page help for further guidance.) The Wikipedia image page for this provides an example of how to document a public domain image. The page for this  provides an example of how to document a "fair use" image.

The Naples Theatre Archives (Archivi di Teatro Napoli) are a valuable resource for portraits of singers, original set and costume designs, etc., especially for Rossini.
 * Naples Theatre Archives search page. Enter the search term in the box for "Ricerca in tutti i cataloghi" and then click "Cerca".
 * Sample image page resulting from a search on "Aureliano in Palmira". (The search produces 3 images in all)

The Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main has many opera related images. You can either search by key word(s) "Freitext" or for a particular "Person". Note that not all the photos, drawings and paintings are out of copyright. However, the individual image pages generally have information (in German) about the date of the work and the photographer/artist.
 * Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt search page To start the search click on "Abfrage starten"
 * Sample image page resulting from a search on "Verdi". (The search produces over 35 images in all)

The New York Public Library - Joseph Muller Collection has thousands of images in their digital gallery, predominantly of composers, singers and musicians. They date from the 16th to the early 20th-centuries, and are mostly engravings and lithographs, with some drawings,
 * Muller Collection search page
 * Sample image page resulting from a search on "Malibran". (The search produces over 20 images in all)

The National Portrait Gallery (UK) has a large collection of opera related portraits, with good documentation.
 * Gallery search page
 * Sample results page for "Adelina Patti"

The National Portrait Gallery (Australia) has good documentation and accompanying biographical articles.
 * Gallery search page
 * Sample image page resulting from a search for Florence Austral

The Library of Congress has many treasures. There is a general search for digitized images. Suggested individual collections to search include:
 * Performing Arts Posters Collection (most are public domain, but check individual items)
 * Photochrom Prints Collection (all are public domain)
 * Portraits by Carl Van Vechten (all are public domain)
 * George Grantham Bain Collection (all are public domain)
 * National Photo Company Collection (images created between 1850 and 1945, all are public domain)

La Médiathèque de l'architecture et du patrimoine (in French) on the site of the French Ministry of Culture is a rich resource.
 * Médiathèque archives search page Enter your key word(s) in the "Texte libre" box and click "lancer la recherche". On the search results page, click on the small document icon next to the image for full details of the image and an enlargeable thumbnail.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France is a another rich source
 * The index page for the virtual exhibitions has French and English versions.
 * Sample Google Image search for "Berlioz" on the BnF virtual exhibitions site.

The BnF's Gallica section has complete scans of thousands of books, scores, ephemera, periodicals etc. online. Many of them are richly illustrated and some are also available in PDF format.

Yale University Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library has photos of many autograph or early edition opera scores and portraits of African-American opera singers.
 * Beinecke Library search page

Dealers in antique prints and music memorabilia can be valuable because they tend to document the images well, although they are not easily searchable. Suggestions include:
 * Roger Gross Ltd. has opera singer and composer portraits, as well as posters and other emphemera. The most efficient way of searching for images on this site is via Google Images with site:rgrossmusicautograph.com "key word(s)" in the search box.
 * Sample image page resulting from a Google site search on "poster".
 * Harmonie Autographs and Music has a large collection of singer, composer, and musician portraits, as well as autographed scores, posters and ephemera. On this site, most images are hidden from Google searches. The best option is to use their own navigation links.
 * Sample image page from Opera Singers A in the navigation bar. (Click on "More details..." next to each thumbnail for enlargement and detailed image information.)


 * Philographikon has two relevant galleries to browse:
 * Portraits of Musicians and Composers
 * Antique Music Prints

Carthalia has an extensive collection of postcards depicting theatres and opera houses, many of which were published before 1923. The site has a search function as well as a navigation bar for quick browsing. For better scans of public domain cards on the site, ask User:AndreasPraefcke on his de.wikipedia talk page. Historic Opera is an online collection of postcards and advertising ephemera depicting opera singers and and operas, many of which were published prior to 1923. The site can be internally searched.
 * Carthalia main page
 * Sample page for the Teatro Colón
 * Historic Opera main page
 * Sample page of postcards depicting singers at Bayreuth circa 1908

See also:
 * Teatro la Fenice in the Programme notes and synopses section.
 * The Virtual Rare Book Room in the General resources section.
 * Project Gutenberg in the Books section.

Sources for scores and audio-visual media
Audio-visual

Note that virtually all YouTube clips uploaded by individuals are copyright violations and per this guideline must not be added as external links to articles. However, several opera companies now have their own official YouTube channels, with high-quality and copyright-compliant video excerpts from operas. These include:
 * La Fenice with lengthy video clips of their past performances with English subtitles.
 * Dutch National Opera
 * Metropolitan Opera
 * San Francisco Opera

Scores
 * The International Music Score Library Project has a virtual library of public domain music here with over 210,000 scores and 20,000 recordings for over 58,000 works by over 7,800 composers.

General resources

 * Almanacco Amadeus compiled by Gherardo Casaglia is useful for premiere dates and casts as well as records of other performances of a particular opera or singer. You can search by a specific date and/or a search string (the box labelled "testo"). Note that the almanac search engine is both case and diacritic sensitive. It doesn't read quote marks as meaning exact phrase, so leave them out. (Sample search results for Maria Malibran) See this page for the sources used to compile the almanac. For many years, the site was hosted by Amadeus, an Italian classical music magazine which has been in print since 1989.


 * Links from Wikipedia articles to the almanac should be made via the Almanacco template.


 * OperaGlass, hosted by Stanford University, has detailed information on many operas, including: libretti, source texts, performance histories, synopses, discographies, and role creators
 * The Center for Italian Opera Studies (CIAO), based at the University of Chicago, has essays by Philip Gossett and others as well as information about the operas of Verdi and Rossini and the critical editions of their scores.
 * The Virtual Rare Book Room at the University of North Texas Music Library has digitized scans of scores, libretti, and playbills. The collection is particularly strong in 18th century French opera.
 * Marston Records, Nimbus Records - Prima Voce Series, and Testament Records specialists in historical recordings, have excellent online liner notes for the recordings in their catalogs. Testament also has libretti available for download as PDF files.
 * The Aria Database holds a collection of information on over 1000 individual opera arias - role, voice part, fach, range and tessitura, setting and synopsis. The database also includes aria texts and translations for most arias. Note that the aria translations are contributed by volunteers and vary in quality and accuracy.
 * The Lied and Art Song Texts Page is an archive of over 25,000 texts used in lieder and other classical art songs as well as many choral works and other types of classical vocal pieces. Information is given about the musical setting(s). Many of the texts also have translations. These are contributed by volunteers and vary in quality and accuracy.
 * Operabase is a fully searchable database with details on opera performances worldwide, opera festivals and companies, and artists. Note that unless you have subscription access, the opera performances will only extend from the end of the current calendar year to the beginning of the previous year.
 * Links from Wikipedia articles for performance listings by composer and/or work should be made via the Operabase template.
 * Operadis has extensive discographies of opera recordings (including operetta, Gilbert & Sullivan and zarzuela) that are or have been commercially available. The discography now lists over 16,000 recordings of over 3000 works, organized by composer and sometimes also by singer and conductor. (See Playback: The Bulletin of the British Library Sound Archive, Summer 2004, page 8, for more about the Operadis project.)
 * Dizionario dell'Opera by Piero Gelli (ed.), Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2005 ISBN 8860731844 (in Italian). Hosted by operamanager.it, this is the searchable online version of the now out-of-print reference work. Some real rarities are included such as Flotow's Alessandro Stradella and Schubert's Die Zauberharfe.
 * Dizionario della musica e dei musicisti dei territori del Ducato di Parma e Piacenza (Dictionary of Music and Musicians in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza), curated by the City of Parma and the Teatro Regio di Parma (in Italian only).
 * Klassika and Operone (in German) can be helpful for finding information on more obscure works and composers. However, it's a good idea to confirm with a second source wherever possible.
 * Libretti d'opera, curated by the University of Padua, is a gold mine of information, especially for relatively obscure Italian operas and is very well annotated and organized. See this example for Mercadante's Nitocri. The site has directions and introductions in both Italian and English, but all the data for individual entries is in Italian.
 * Le théâtre de la Foire a Paris, maintained by the University of Nantes. A rich database and image bank concentrating on the "non-official" theatrical troupes and their productions in seventeenth and eighteenth century Paris (in French only).
 * CESAR, an excellent database and image bank for French opera and theatre in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its advisory and editorial boards are made up of British and European musicologists (in French and English).
 * Accademia Musicale IAMR (Italian Academy of Musical Research), specializes in Italian opera rarities and has extensive material on the operas of Giovanni Legrenzi, Domenico Cimarosa, and Giovanni Paisiello. The site has both Italian and English versions.
 * Opening Night! Opera and Oratorio Premieres. Details of 38,000 premieres can be searched and filtered by a wide variety of criteria. Notes on data sources, and their choices of names and orthographies can be found here.
 * Gallica from the Bibliothèque nationale de France has complete scans of thousands of books, scores, ephemera, periodicals etc. online. Many of them are richly illustrated. Some are also available in PDF format and/or plain text format.
 * Open Music Library published by Alexander Street Press, a subsidiary of ProQuest, is a database with links to scores and journal articles. It can be of use as a specialised search engine. However, most of their material, even some which is out of copyright, is behind a paywall. Access is often available from libraries and other institutions, and the Wikipedia Library Card Platform may provide access to some of the paywall content on application. See Access to scholarly sources online below for details.

Access to scholarly sources online
Although many printed scholarly books and journal articles are now online, e.g. via Google Books (mentioned above) and JSTOR, much of this material is behind a paywall or requires access to an institutional subscription, including JSTOR. However, The Wikipedia Library Card Platform. Wikipedia has formed partnerships with a variety of academic publishers to provide free access to their online material for Wikipedia editors on approved application. Many of them are highly relevant to opera or have a significant number of books and scholarly journals on the subject, e. g. Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (RIPM), JSTOR, Project MUSE, Taylor & Francis, Baylor University Press, Bloomsbury Publishing, Cambridge University Press, Edinburgh University Press, etc.. The full list of partners and instructions for applications is here.

RILM Music Encyclopedias
RILM Music Encyclopedias - scanned/encoded versions of 54 dictionaries/encyclopedias are available in many public libraries. A number of these works are among the only places to find biographical information on certain musicians. Tiles in 'bold are the most useful for opera research.
 * Algemene muziekencyclopedie
 * Annals of Opera
 * Band Music Notes
 * Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians
 * Biographical Dictionary of Musicians: With a Bibliography of English Writings on Music
 * Biographical Dictionary of Russian/Soviet Composers
 * Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique
 * Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon
 * Blasmusik-Lexikon: Komponisten – Autoren – Werke – Literatur
 * Broadway: Its History, People, and Places: An Encyclopedia
 * Československý hudební slovník osob a institucí
 * Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
 * Conductors and Composers of Popular Orchestral Music: A Biographical and Discographical Sourcebook
 * Dictionary of American classical composers
 * Dictionary of Music and Musicians (A.D. 1450–1889)
 * Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes
 * Dictionnaire de la musique: Les hommes et leurs œuvres
 * Dictionnaire de la musique: Science de la musique: Formes, techniques, instruments
 * Dictionnaire de musique
 * Dictionnaire des œuvres de l’art vocal
 * Dizionario degli editori musicali italiani, 1750–1930
 * Dizionario e bibliografia della musica
 * Dizionario universale dei musicisti (Schmidl)
 * Enciclopédia da música brasileira
 * Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music
 * Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century
 * Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound
 * Encyclopedia of the American Theatre Organ
 * Encyclopedia of the Blues
 * Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire
 * Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
 * Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon: Das Lexikon der schwarzen Szene, von Ambient bis Industrial, von Neofolk bis Future Pop und von Goth-Rock bis Black Metal
 * Großes Sängerlexikon
 * Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie
 * Historical Dictionary of the Music and Musicians of Finland
 * Hollywood Songsters: Singers Who Act and Actors Who Sing: A Biographical Dictionary
 * Hugo Riemanns Musik-Lexikon
 * International Encyclopedia of Women Composers
 * Komponisten der Gegenwart
 * March Music Notes
 * Melodramma italiano: Dizionario bio-bibliografico dei compositori
 * Neues Historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonküstler
 * Opernlexikon (Stieger)
 * Paris Opéra: An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballets, Composers, and Performers
 * Percussionists: A biographical dictionary (JRG)
 * Steirisches Musiklexikon
 * Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song
 * The 20th century violin concertante
 * Παγκοσμιο Λεξικο Της Μουσικης [Pagkosmio Lexiko Tes Mousikes]

Referencing online sources
When listing an online text as a source, be as specific as possible, giving the full bibliographic information and linking to the exact page where it appears, if at all possible. This is key, as online sources sometimes disappear and the reader needs to know how to find the work elsewhere.


 * Sample reference for a book which is also online:
 * Test, George Austin (1991) Satire: Spirit and Art, University of Florida Press, p. 93. ISBN 081301087X. Accessed 17 March 2008.


 * Sample references for articles from a journal or newspaper which are also online:
 * Ashley, Tim, 'He's got no strings', The Guardian, March 14, 2002. Accessed 17 March 2008.
 * Naginski, Isabelle Hoog, 'Accidental families: ritual and initiation in Horace and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt', The Romantic Review, May 2005. Accessed via subscription 9 March 2008.


 * Sample references for articles and books which were published elsewhere and re-printed on another site:
 * Gossett, Philip 'Rossini’s Petite Messe solennelle and Its Several Versions' (originally published in Music Observed: Studies in Memory of William C. Holmes, Colleen Reardon and Susan Parisi (eds.) (2004), Warren, pp. 139-146.). Accessed 17 March 2008.
 * Long, John Luther (1903) Madame Butterfly  (originally published by Grosset and Dunlap). Accessed 17 March 2008.


 * Sample references for material appearing only on a web site (not previously published in hardcopy):
 * Brauner, Patricia B. 'What is a critical edition? How does it happen?', The Center for Italian Opera Studies (CIAO), University of Chicago. Accessed 17 March 2008.
 * OperaGlass, Role Creators in the Operas of Giacomo Meyerbeer. Accessed 17 March 2008.


 * Sample references for online liner notes
 * Kaufman, Tom, Liner Notes: Hermann Jadlowker - Dramatic Coloratura Tenor, Marston Records, 1998. Accessed 3 March 2009.
 * Romero, Justin, Liner Notes - Granados: María del Carmen, Marco Polo CD 8.225292-93, Naxos Records, 2004. Accessed 3 March 2010.